Dear Editor,
Today, July 14, 2016, I'm writing the last article I will write on the politics of St. Martin.
I have decided to concentrate the balance of my time from now on, on cultivating my home garden and writing my autobiography and auto-eulogy.
Before taking this life retreat from the politics of my homeland this, my ultimate article, you will find hereafter is simply the expression of my will to share with you – my patriots, my thoughts on the St. Martin you likely will be voting for a few months from today.
The newly created Collectivité of St. Martin was handed over on January 1, 2008 to our elected leaders with a budget evaluated at 74.6 million euros, in running expenditures. This is significantly below the budget of Anguilla (6, 500 inhabitants) and quite three times below the running expenditures budget of Dutch St. Maarten, 40,000 inhabitants compared to French St. Martin 37,000 inhabitants
The 74.6 million euros running expenditures was compensated by: 32.6 million (44 per cent), in taxation transferred at potential value of which 16.4 million was officially recognised as potentially non-collectable; 36.9 million in allowances including compensations (allotment); 5.1 budget deficit after all compensations.
In spite of this budgetary precariousness between 2008 and 2012, the State recuperated seven million euros off of the transfer of competences budget, by operating cuts on the 2009 to 2012 allowances due to St. Martin this said to be recuperation of over-plus allowances wrongly paid to St. Martin from 2008 to 2010.
On the back of the above, in April 2011, the State decided to inflict St. Martin with a perpetual yearly re-evaluated debt burden evaluated at 63,412,600 euros for the year 2008.
Debt resulting from the readjustment of the charges of the sole Fire Department transferred from the Department/Guadeloupe to the Collectivité in 2008.
For this year 2016, the running expenditures budget of the Collectivité is fixed at 137 million euros, an increase of over 185 per cent compared to the 2008 transfer of competences budget (74.6 millions)
A fiscal receipt budgeted of the sum of 81.01 million euros, an increase of 249 per cent compared to the 32.6 million of the 2008 transfer of competences budget. Increase consisted essentially on the implementation upon the unprivileged social strata residents of unprecedented taxation, abusive and fraudulent impositions, fraudulent calculations,
All which will be illegal if referred to the French national fiscal legislation, but permissible upon the power of the said granted Fiscal Autonomy to SXM.
Useless to plead our fate before the Conseil d'Etat or the Conseil Constitutionnel, they both refer not to the laws and fundamental principles of the French Republic, but squarely dismiss any case of abuse of fiscal power of the COM St. Martin placed before them by slyly assimilating the fiscal autonomy of COM St. Martin to the 1830’s regime of the colonies, when the French constitution declared that the regime of colonies is determined by special laws called the colonial charter (La Charte Coloniale).
The January 1st, 1798 constitution of France (La Convention) also did declared the autonomy of the colonies within the sovereignty of the Republic, represented by an agent of the Republic, the first appointed to Guadeloupe including St. Martin, was Victor Hugues, no need to recall the despotism and bloody terror that the natives suffered under his reign.
Paris declarations of autonomy within the Republic to French Overseas Territories had always meant and will always mean more power in the hands of the State’s appointed representatives.
Considering all the above, and looking to unfold such a shameful rat race between natives contemplating the president seat of the Collectivité in the upcoming March 2017 COM elections,
A rat race in which none is less incompetent than the other, and all to blame directly and indirectly for the immature unfolding of the new status of St. Martin and the catastrophic situation the country natives are now confronted with.
It, therefore, becomes very clear to me that voicing my opinion in such an irrational, self-centred, egocentric environment is like a lonely man crying out in a vast no man’s land.
So, I have decided after the publication of this ultimate article to retreat in my home garden, write out my autobiography and auto-eulogy, and simply wait and see.
What will be, will be; que sera sera.
Leopold Baly aka The Elder
